Consider the Great Problem of Women’s Bodies

“Consider the great problem of women’s bodies. What to do about them? Well this is one thing you can do about them:

You can cover them up.

Now it is the position, generally speaking, of our intellectual community that while we may not like this, we might think of this as ‘wrong’ in Boston or Palo Alto, who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags? And who are we to say, even, that they’re wrong to beat them with lengths of steel cable, or throw battery acid in their faces if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way?

Well, who are we not to say this?

Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this? I’m not talking about the voluntary wearing of a veil — women should be able to wear whatever they want, as far as I’m concerned. But what does ‘voluntary’ mean in a community where, when a girl gets raped, her father’s first impulse, rather often, is to murder her out of shame?

Just let that fact detonate in your brain for a minute: Your daughter gets raped, and what you want to do is kill her.

What are the chances that represents a peak of human flourishing?

Now, to say this is not to say that we have got the perfect solution in our own society. For instance, this is what it’s like to go to a news stand almost anywhere in the civilized world:

Now, granted, for many men it may require a degree in philosophy to see something wrong with these images.

But if we are in a reflective mood, we can ask, ‘Is this the perfect expression of psychological balance with respect to variables like youth and beauty and women’s bodies?’ I mean, is this the optimal environment in which to raise our children?

Probably not.

OK, so perhaps there’s some place on the spectrum between these two extremes that represents a place of better balance. Perhaps there are many such places — again, given other changes in human culture there may be many peaks on the moral landscape.”

12 thoughts on “Consider the Great Problem of Women’s Bodies”

Sam Harris always uses his annoying brand of smug humour to win over the audience, rather than winning them over with true insights. You can already tell I’m not a huge fan of his can’t you… 😉

But what I found most frustrating about this clip is that he steers our attention away from the main issue which is that the majority of the human race actually have a pretty good grasp of moral issues … with one important caveat: provided our natural (which is to say rational) moral stance on a particular issue has not been corrupted by unnatural, irrational and pernicious indoctrination since birth.

Make a list of the most crazy, dysfunctional, irrational and immoral beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of any society and you’ll see that they tend to be the result of religious indoctrination or political indoctrination (and increasingly we might add ‘corporate’ indoctrination) – almost always instilled in the population from a very young age.

With this in mind, what we call ‘culture’ might be defined as everything which we are taught about the world which is CONTRARY to evidence, rational thinking and basic morality…. and which therefore has to be taught to us via indoctrination. It’s actually more a form of *training* than true teaching.

So we might say that we have to be *trained* to act immorally and that that training comes in the form of ‘cultural inheritance’ – particularly in terms of religious and political culture.

Any society which woke up one day with total cultural amnesia would instantly become MORE moral, MORE rational, MORE sane, MORE functional as a society. ‘Culture’ is like the practice of binding feet, only it’s a binding of the mind. And like the bones of the feet, our minds must be broken and warped during early development while our minds are still pliable, and vulnerable and before we are old enough to object to the practice.

The reason why foreign cultures so often seem to be backward and immoral is that we were never subject to their brand of indoctrination. It’s like the old saying “The animal which is least likely to discover water is a fish”. In the same way it’s hard for us to spot OUR OWN irrational and immoral cultures for what they really are – they’re just too familiar to us. The idea of wanting to murder your own daughter for being raped seems abhorrent to us. But the idea of proudly sending your own children off to commit genocide – including the murder of women, children and babies – all justified (apparently) by a bunch of superstitious beliefs and conspiracy theories about WMD’s and terrorists seems perfectly normal to millions of western adults. They consider this practice of mass murder a matter of duty, honour, pride, patriotism… which is probably not far removed from the feelings of the father who wants to murder his daughter.

And for many young women in the west the sight of man dressed in one of the costumes provided by government to their paid assassins is considered sexy. To other cultures these costume might appear more like the stereotypical ‘Hannibal Lecture’ outfit of a mass murdering psychopath (ie not sexy at all but actually very scary).

Basic ‘bread and butter’ moral rules are not rocket science. It’s immoral to steal. It’s immoral to initiate force against someone (rape, murder, assault, coerce, threaten, kidnap etc). We learn these rules when we are children and they make sense to us (provided we are not mentally damaged in some way).

If society adhered to just those two basic moral rules WITHOUT EXCEPTION society would be a very civilised and pleasant place indeed. But as far as our daily lives are concerned we DO adhere to these basic moral rules. And anyone who does violate these moral rules is dealt with accordingly precisely BECAUSE the majority of us do recognise these moral rules are the foundation for a civilised and fair society. If I steal someone’s car or assault someone I’m not going to find society split on whether or not I have acted immorally.

The ONLY groups who we routinely allow to violate these two basic moral rules are governments, and to a lesser extent religions (more so in non western nations). Only people acting on behalf of governments or religions are allowed to violate basic morality. And the amount of immoral behaviour we allow them to get away with is directly proportional to how much we *believe* in the automatic authority of the particular government or religion in our society (in our culture).

So now it’s all starting to make sense. Governments and religions (at least those religions which still seek to maintain active control over how society is organised) literally cannot operate within the framework of basic universal morality (such as it’s immoral to steal/ it’s immoral to initiate force). They violate basic morality is all sorts of blatantly obvious ways.

That is WHY they have to use relentless propaganda from an early age to break down and override our own natural, rational morality when it comes to the subject of politics and religion. This propaganda is woven into our ‘culture’ so deeply we can’t see it for what it is. We are trained to see political and religious practices from a completely non rational/ non moral viewpoint …. it’s just ‘how things are’. Our rational/ moral perspective on these subjects has been deliberately broken or disabled by propaganda which has been deeply woven into our culture. The automatic authority of government is a part of our western culture just as much as the automatic authority of god is part of many other non western cultures. In both cases that authority automatically overrides moral principles.

Thanks to a program of multi generational indoctrination (‘cultural inheritance’) murder, assault, persecution, theft, torture, war etc when committed in the name of our cultural government or our cultural god magically becomes excusable (or even virtuous).

Does our (government controlled) school curriculum ever officially define what morality / immorality is? No, of course not. It *can’t* because then schoolchildren would immediately realise that all government activities (including how the teacher obtains his/ her salary) are founded on immoral behaviour such as theft and the initiation of force. Instead schools train us to view governments and religions as moral, noble and respectable institutions by default and irrespective of their behaviour in the real world.

It’s not that basic morality is that hard to define at all – it’s that moral principles threaten the entire corrupt hierarchy which rules the world! (just as throughout history scientific principles which were quite easy to establish threatened a bunch of previous superstitious beliefs and were therefore resisted for centuries).

As Stefan Molyneux brilliantly points out, when you are presented with a moral rule the first thing to look at is NOT the moral rule itself but who’s exempt from it!

You’ve just won the award for the most comprehensive comment ever left on my blog. I essentially agree with much of what you’re saying, other than when you claim that human nature is utterly immoral (and when you say Harris’s humor is “smug”).

“…I essentially agree with much of what you’re saying, other than when you claim that human nature is utterly immoral…”

If I sounded like I was saying that I didn’t mean to. To clarify…

I actually think human nature is essentially *good*. My point was that thanks to ‘cultural indoctrination’ millions of essentially good people end up *behaving* in very immoral ways, especially when it comes to supporting and funding the immoral actions of governments.

The problem is we’ve been trained to think of these immoral behaviours as virtuous, noble, dutiful, ‘patriotic’, responsible….. or at least neutral (just how the world works).

If you don’t fully realise you’re acting immorally then you can’t be accused of being an immoral person – even though strictly speaking you are. Does that make sense? But of course we all have a responsibility to be the moral judge of our own actions …. but when culture says “this is acceptable” or “this is what’s expected” it can be very difficult to go against the herd.

As an example, I would say that every ‘voter’ is acting immorally because they are voting for a third party (their elected representatives) to initiate force on their behalf. Initiating force against someone else (coercion, assault, murder, rape, kidnapping, intimidation etc) is pretty basic immoral behaviour. Everyone gets that.

And so you have this weird situation where very few ‘voters’ would actually be prepared (morally speaking) to come round my house in person and threaten me at gunpoint with being locked in a cage unless I fund some war or other policy which I strongly object to. Most people would realise that acting that way is totally immoral – it’s a form of terrorism…..

…….. and yet they’re advocating exactly the same immoral behaviour every time they vote for a political party to get into power and start threatening me – on their behalf – to fund and obey a bunch of policies and laws which the voter wants but which I strongly object to. Voters know that if I refuse to fund and obey their ‘elected representatives’ they will send round armed thugs dressed in matching blue costumes to kidnap me and put me in a cage as punishment. If I resist or try to defend my person or property from this aggression (or if I attempt to escape the cage) they will probably shoot me.

But try and point out to your average voter that voting in political elections is immoral (because it’s basically a form of terrorism) and they will look like you’re insane. “Voting = democracy = freedom!” they will say. This is what government education teaches us from the age of four.

This is how the ‘system’ gets essentially good people to behave immorally – through endless indoctrination and propaganda…. through ‘culture’.

No ruler (not even Hitler) ever openly demanded the public behave immorally. They always say “Invading this country and killing these people is the moral thing to do!”

Most political rulers are psychopaths and if here’s one thing psychopaths are good at it’s knowing how to use other people’s moral values against them.

Try convincing thousands of good, virtuous, idealistic young men to leave their girlfriends/ wives and families and go and commit mass murder – risking their lives in the process. Try convincing them this would be ‘a good idea’. It’s impossible.

Yet by expertly creating a ‘culture’ which twists morality on its head and rams it into everyone’s brains generation after generation, it’s a piece of cake.

Aaaagh! …. this was going to be a short comment! Damn you Sam Harris! 😉

Thank you, Sam. I grew up in Japan, a modest culture which offers a balance between these two extremes. I find myself just as uncomfortable–angry, even–at the American exploitation of women’s bodies as I would at the Muslim suffocation of them. I am grieved beyond words at the latter but in a state of constant, almost physical irritation at the former.

I doubt if a degree in philosophy or anything else would enable men to “see something wrong with these images.” For those boys who lacked a father who honored his wife and taught his sons to respect their mother and sisters, it might require a paradigm shift by Jesus Christ to give them His eyes for women as individuals worthy of honor.

I’d agree, though Harris is not talking about Japan and the Muslim World; he is discussing America and the Muslim world. And in the context of how each of those cultures views women, there certainly is some point on the spectrum which may be more desirable than what we have. (That’s not to say each is equally bad; swimsuits are better than burquas.)